


Rebuild

by Challopea



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Rey|Pirate Queen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-02 04:26:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16298138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Challopea/pseuds/Challopea
Summary: There are two words in the universe that have never been in Rey's dictionary--"give up". As she sits down on the floor of the decrepit hanger bay on a long lost old Rebellion base, systematically cleans up and rebuilds the Millennium Falcon inch by inch, the Force whispers, exhilarated by her determination. Somewhere deep in the throne room of the new Supremacy, Kylo Ren is jerked up by the tremors in the Force. Chill crawls down his spine as he stares across the expanse, the galaxy, and he shivers.





	1. It's the compressor, again!

There are two words in the universe that have never come into Rey’s dictionary—“give up.”

It has been two weeks since they escaped Crait and the wrath of the new Supreme Leader of the First order. They have settled down on this small planet on the Outer Rim, K738-5, an old mining outpost, abandoned decades ago after its only valuable natural resource, an element critical to the compound to speed up the cloning process, was outlawed. Bail Organa bought the planet, erased it from the records of the old Empire, and converted it into a potential backup base for the rebellion. Now their last place to hide. Their last chance to regroup and rebuild.

“We have everything we need to rebuild.” General Leia Organa once told her as the Millennium Falcon escaped the gravity pull of Crait and jumped into hyperspace. 

But how? It is not that she does not trust General Organa. The good old woman helped her father build the original rebellion, and defeated an empire. She has also built the new resistance from scratch and has been fighting the First Order ever since. If there is only one sentient being in this universe who knows how to build a rebellion, it has to be General Organa. That’s something Rey can put all her faith into. 

But what can she do for the rebuild? She has followed the general’s command and her lead but there is not much she can do. She has helped the technicians with fixing up the old base and getting what is left of the resistance to settle in. She has helped the communications with overhauling the decade old communication subspace arrays so General Leia Organa can contact her old allies. She has helped Poe Dameron to fix the old flight simulators so he and fighter pilots can keep on training. They are a small operation and after the tumultuous first two weeks, there are not much left for her to do except staring at her broken light saber and fretting about how to fix it, of which she absolutely has no clue. 

Rey stares at the old Jedi books from the First Temple. She has spent every spare minute she has to decipher the old mystic text, but they are as elusive as ever. She puts down the book and decides to give herself a break. 

It is quiet outside her small bunker room. Everyone is asleep. There is a barely audible sound of remote hammering and knocking sounds far faraway. She follows the sound down the empty corridors until it leads her into the huge cavern at the entrance of the base that is used as a hanger bay. 

“Chewie?” Rey popped her head into the hyper-drive compartment of the Millennium Falcon. “What are you fixing here?”

The Wookie grunts his greeting.

“The compressor again? New damages?” 

The Wookie grunted. 

Rey plomped down next to Chewie. “My bypass does not work? I told Unkar that he should not put in the compressor.” 

Three hours later. Dawn breaks outside the gate into the hangar bay, and people on the base start to stir. 

“Now I really really want to kill that Unkar Pruitt.” Rey grinds the words out between her teeth, and nods while Chewie grunts out his own frustration.

“Did you two work all night again on it?” General Leia Organa popped her head in and looked at them smiling.

Chewie grunts.

“Oh, Chewie, don’t say that. It just needs a new hyper drive.” Leia takes the hand of her old friend. “We will get it a new hyper drive.”

“Where? Han had so many upgrades, especially those for short spurts of hyperspace jumps.” Rey hits on the outer encasement of the hyper drive. “You can’t find things like this anymore these days.” Parts and bolts rattle off before her hand is completely off the casing. 

Chewie grunts in frustration as Rey’s disappeared underneath the casing to check on the new damages.

“We will have it custom-made, Chewie.” Leia hugged her old friend. “Don’t worry.”

“But we don’t have the money.” Rey blurts it out from under the hyper-drive. They don’t have the credits to replenish basic munition and other supplies, let alone a new hyper-drive for Millennium Falcon. 

“We will find a sponsor.” Leia Organa stands up and starts pacing back and forth on the metal works of the Millennium Falcon. “I have several very good leads.”

Rey rolls her eyes from below the hyper-drive. She is no diplomat but she knows that things have not been going as well as General Organa has let on. 

Chewie grunts his agreement with Rey besides his old friend, and his concerns that their first priorities now are fuel, ammunition, and other supplies. 

“Oh, my dear old friend. Nothing is more important than the Falcon. Don't worry about the credits. The first sponsor is always the hardest one to get. But after that, money will just pour in.”

Rey popped her head out from below the hyper-drive and curiously watched the two old friends, their hair grey, their shoulders scrunched, their back bent low as if the weight of the rebellion is just too much for them to bear. 

Out of the millions of things they need to worry about, Millennium Falcon should be the least of their worries. 

This is their home. This is something Han had been building on, upgrading, adding on new functions, so many times with his own hands, for them. This is their home. This is their last refuge. This is their safety haven. That must have been what Han was thinking when he worked on the Millennium Falcon, again and again, over so many years.

Rey wipes the tear off her eyelashes. “I can rebuild it.” She stands up. “I will rebuild it.” She walks up and grabs the hands of Leia Organa. “Please let me rebuild it. Han talked about rebuilding it when we were on Takodana." Rey looks eagerly into those large beautiful brown eyes. "I will make it as new and beautiful and fast and amazing as Han would ever want it to be.”


	2. You are working on that old piece of junk again!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The new supreme leader of the First Order catches Rey working on rebuilding the hyper-drive of Millennium Falcon, goes haywire, degenerates into a super-whining baby until his mommy shows up.

Rey picks another part out of the bucket of cleaning oil. It has soaked in it for the over forty-eight hours. It shines in her hand, glittering gold. Rey still examines it extensively, rubbing off every bit of dirt with a glass fiber rag, repairing every bit of blemish before she carefully replaces it into the partial hyper drive that is coming into shape slowly in her hands. 

It is a beautiful process. It is a soothing process. It is the hardest part of the entire process yet the most rewarding one. Rey hums her favorite song from her days back scavenging on Jakku. The sound effect inside the hyper drive compartment of Millennium Falcon is not as good as on the vast empty haunting wreckage of Jakku, but it is still so much fun. 

Rey can feel the Force is humming along with her. It flows over her, encircling, dancing, surrounding her, brushing her face and her arms. It is laughing with her. As it always did when she was back on Jakku. It turns out, the Force has always been with her, it is just she does not know it. 

Everything just flows on so easily. She has been at this for over fifteen hours, but feels not a bit tired. Even Chewie gave up his vigil over her shoulder and went back to his own bunker to sleep. Uncle Chewie has finally decided to trust Rey, accepting that she can tear apart Han’s baby and put it back together even better than him. That’s the accomplishment of the year. Rey wants to pump her fists into the Force and celebrate. Well, she will wait until she finishes rebuilding the hyper-drive. She is almost there. Rey let the flow of the Force help her hands and her brain. Her fingers weave as the force choreographs them into a peaceful harmony of bright golden magic.

Until it is suddenly interrupted by the dark brooding sizzling energy of anger, impatience, and frustration encroaching into the small space.

“Are you fixing that piece of old junk again?” His voice is burning with anger and disappointment.

Rey looks up as he emerges from the shadow, stops outside the entrance to hyper drive compartment, and glowers at her.

What a bummer. Mood killer. “I am not fixing it. I am rebuilding it.” 

“This is a waste of your life!” He stomps around impatiently. His gloved hand goes up his head and tousles his hair, his beautiful, luxurious, dark hair. “You should be working on your light saber.”

Rey turns her head back to her rebuilding work. “It is not. When I’m done with this hyper-drive, and this ship, it’s going to make the Kessel run in ten parsecs.”

“I should have blown this out piece of junk out of the sky.” Frustrated, Kylo Ren crouches down and squeezes his huge frame inside the hyper-drive compartment. “I should.” He pulls out his light saber. “I should have done it long, long time ago.”

“No. You don’t.” Rey jumps on to her feet and stands between him and the hyper-drive before he can flip the light saber on. “You don’t get to do it here.” She takes one step forward and force pushes him out of the entrance of the hyper-drive compartment. 

Kylo’s heavy body knocks over several large crates of new replacement parts littering around the floor of Millennium Falcon before it hits the bulwark and stops. 

“Put that thing away.” Rey force-calls a heavy mega-wrench into her hand and raises it over her head, she stalks over to where Kylo is and hovers above him. “Or I’ll tear you up into pieces just like I did to that hyper-drive. But when I am done putting you back together,” Rey pauses and looks down over him. “You’ll never be the same again. I am going to fix everything that is wrong with you, your big airhead.” Rey threatens.

“There’s nothing wrong with me.” Kylo Ren protests as he clicks his light saber back on to his belt and wiggles his way back up his feet. He peeks at Rey from under the hair hanging on his forehead as if trying to figure out her real meaning behind those words.

“Everything is wrong with you.” Rey is absolutely frustrated when he just looks away and avoids her gaze. His gorgeous hair hangs over his very handsome face and hides his large brown eyes. “Almost everything.” Rey corrects herself.

“Put that thing down.” Kylo takes a small step toward Rey and says with a smirk on his face. “It’s not a light saber. You look so ridiculous with it.” He flips the hair out of his eyes, and asks her curiously, "Where is your light saber?”

“Broken.” Rey lowers the mega-wrench. “As if you are not part of the reason.” Rey scowls at him.

"Look who's saying that!" Kylo stomps around, and kicks one of the crates really hard. "It would never have happened if you had just accepted my offer." The crate flies off, smashes into opposite bulkhead, and breaks a large trunk off the rusty metal paneling before it finally crashes on the floor. 

Rey stares at the big gaping hole in the bulkhead as her jaw drops. Anger churns and sizzles in the blood that flows through her body. “Get out of here!” She yells.

“That’s it.” Kylo freezes amid his stomping around. His gloved hands raised in Rey’s direction. “That’s my girl!” He waves them like a conductor of an orchestra getting ready to start a new symphony. “Focus your anger and feel the strength coming with it.”

Watching Kylo Ren suddenly switches from trashing around like a super baby into his dark prince Sith master mode, Rey does not know whether she should cry or laugh. “Oh, Force.” She raises her hand to cover her forehead. “Oh, Force.” She shakes her head and stares at Kylo with much less vehemence. “Get out of here.” She demands again, albeit in a much lower voice, like a deflated balloon. 

“No way.” Kylo crosses his arms in front of him in defiance and a huge grin spreads from one of his big ear to the other.

Rey turns back. She drops the wrench inside an open crate that she uses as a make-shift toolbox, ready to completely ignore the big super baby and go back to her work. Then she feels it. It is a slight tug in the force. Someone else has entered Millennium Falcon and heading toward the hyper-drive compartment. Someone’s presence, also full of light, in the force.

“Her.” Kylo’s face suddenly turns even paler. Every muscle on his face freezes. Relief, regret, anger, self-hatred, despise, all types of emotions whirl around in the deep darkness of his large black eyes. All the feelings that he had once shared with her when they were touching hands in the pilgrim’s hut on Ahch-To.

Rey’s heart aches to see him like this. “Ben, do you want to talk to her?” She asks him through tears hanging on her lashes. 

Kylo’s lowers his eyes. When he raises them again and looks in her eyes from under the dark hair hanging on his forehead, there is nothing there, no pain, no hurt, no screams for help. Just bottomless darkness, endless emptiness. He shakes his head, and vanishes. Not a trace of him, or his force signature left in the empty space that just a blink ago was sizzling with his presence.


	3. Have you ever thought about changing Han?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Girl talk time for Rey and Leia. They share their memories of Han, and talk about marriages and changing man. Just changing Han. Not some random man. Definitely not a certain resistance commander with a first name starting with "P".

“Hi, Rey,” Leia Organa walks in from the corridor leading up to the hyper-drive compartment. “How are you doing?”

Rey collects herself and turns to face the woman that is Ben Solo’s mother and suddenly feels incredibly tired. “General Organa.” 

“You look so tired, Rey.” She beams a motherly smile at Rey. It is blindingly bright. “Come take a break. You have worked fifteen hours nonstop. You need a break now.” She raises a small plate she has been holding in her elegant fingers. “Look what I have got here for you.” 

It is a small plate of desserts from ration packages. Giving their quickly disappearing supply of rations, a plate of desserts only, even though only a small plate, is a special treat.

“Are they for me?” Rey accepts the plate from Leia with nervous hands, and looks in to those beautiful brown eyes of the elderly woman in front of her with all appreciation and respects. They are almost the same shape and color as the pair that she was staring in to just a few moments ago. Ben Solo has his mother’s eyes.

“You have saved us so many credits by rebuilding the hyper-drive of Millennium Falcon. A little special treatment is exactly what you deserve.” The older woman gives Rey’s arm a gentle & warm pat and smiles at the younger woman. That blindingly bright and motherly smile all over again. It tugs at Rey’s heart. It makes her incredibly grateful and a little hurt? Why the hurt?

The desserts on the small plate have all been freshly reheated. Each one a different variety. All her favorites. Leia Organa, the legendary general of rebellion, the senator of the New Republic, the leader of the resistance, and the princess of Alderaan, has not only walked into a kitchen and fixed a late night snack for Rey. Everything she has picked up is Rey’s favorite. How could the older woman know how hat Rey likes?

Ben’s mother must have paid extra attention when Rey sat across her at dinner in the cafeteria. But their table is so large, and everyone is so boisterous, if this elegant princess, the mother of her counterpart in the cosmic force, was paying her any extra attention, Rey the scavenger from Jakku has been too socially clumsy and awkward to notice.

Rey’s face turns red. Is this what having a mother is like? Rey does not remember much about her own mother, and in her memories, no one has ever done anything like this for her. Is it something Leia used to do a lot for Ben when he was young, before he was shipped off to Luke and practically forever lost to her?

Rey scrambles backward and sits down on an over turned crate. She stares down at the desserts and the elegant small plate in her hands. Tears roll down her cheeks as she picks a wedge shaped piece up and stuffs it slowly into her mouth.

“Oh, my girl.” The general, in her elegant grey gown which must have been a remnant of her days as a princess senator of the new Republic, sits down next to Rey on the old dirty crate and hugs Rey by the shoulders. “Don’t cry, my little girl. Don’t cry.” 

“I am just so happy.” Rey smiles through her tears. “No one I remember has ever done something like this for me.”

“Then you’d better get used to it.” Leia hugs Rey’s shoulder a little tighter. “It is not going to stop coming as long as I am still alive.” She wipes Rey’s tears off with her long elegant fingers.. “Wait, you have got something on your face, my little mechanic.” She carefully rubs a smear of grease off Rey’s cheeks. “Got it fixed.” She smiles & looks at Rey. “You look so good in the overalls.” She laid slightly back on her hands on the crate. “I know Han always wants a little girl. One who loves mechanics and runs around in cute little greasy overalls. He never says it aloud. If he had, I wouldn’t mind it at all. In fact, I would have very much loved it. How lovely it would be just watching him hoist the little girl up his shoulders and shows her all the grooves and cracks of how to fix the hyper drive of Millennium Falcon.” 

“What about Ben? Did Han teach him how to fix things around the Millennium Falcon when he was young?” 

”Ben is no mechanic”, the older woman waves her hand and shakes her head. “He was such a lost cause.” The words must have hit a nerve. The older woman takes a deep breath, stands up, and starts pacing back and forth before stops in front of hyper drive. “Look, ” she points at the younger woman’s handy work. “This is amazing. It is almost finished. You are so good with this. It is so beautiful.” She turns around beams at Rey. “I don’t think Han can do a better job. Wait till he sees it. He is going to be so proud.”

Rey wipes her nose clean with the sleeve of her overall and smiles back. “He’ll just shrug and say not bad, w a big slanted grin.”

“Yes. That’s so Han.” Leia nods and smiles. “That man is always on my nerves.”

It is not the first time Rey notices that the general likes to talk about Han as if he is still alive. But only in Rey’s company, when they are reminiscing about Han together. It is their little secret. Rey understands. Leia can’t talk like this in front of her old friend Chewie, it will only make Chewie feel even worse about the loss of his best friend of life. Leia can’t talk like this in front of the rest of the resistance, for fear that they might think she has lost her mind in addition to her heart. Is it too hard for the old woman to accept that Han is gone? Or is she secretly holding on to the fantasy that someday he might just walk up the porch, open the door and say, “Honey, I am back.”

Just like what Rey has been doing. She still thinks about her parents in the present tense and fantasizes about their coming back for her even after Kylo Ren brutally pointed out that they are dead and had never planned on coming back for her. Rey bites hard on the piece of dessert in her mouth. That man is so incorrigible. He just keeps on getting on her nerves. She stares at the other half of the dessert she is holding in her hands for a long while. Then she turns to the older woman who has been absent-mindedly examining Rey’s handy work. “Had you ever thought about changing Han?”

Startled by Rey’s question, the general looks lost and confused. Her left brow tilts upward in question, in exactly the same way Ben likes to do.

“I mean before you married him or at the beginning of your marriage, had you ever thought about changing him?” Rey’s face turns beet red. “By him, I mean Han.” Rey adds, for fear that Leia might get confused, and think Rey is talking about someone else.

“Changing Han?” Leia looks at Rey puzzled. She studies Rey’s face very carefully, and almost giggled. “Is there a particular not so perfect young man you have in mind? Someone you want to change? Let me guess. Does his first name starts with a ‘P’?” Leia teased. 

“No. No. Not Commander Dameron.” Rey almost chokes on the piece of dessert she is chewing. Her face turns even redder. 

“Why not? He’s a pilot and he’s dashingly handsome. All the girls in the resistance are so hot for him.” 

”Not me. Definitely not me.” Rey shakes her head in earnest denial. “I’m a very good pilot too.” 

”Love is not a competition. Remember it my little girl.” Leia wags a finger at Rey and grins. “You are a very, very good pilot. That’s what Poe said too. That’s why he is so hot for you.” 

Is Ben’s mother playing matchmaker for her and Commander Dameron? Thanks Force Ben is not here. Rey shakes her head at the images in her mind of the angry and furious new Supreme Leader of the First Order slashing and destroying everything within his reach around Millennium Falcon, releasing all the firepower under his command to bomb everything out of existence on a planet. This is definitely not time to let that demon out. “No. No. No. There’s no way.” 

“Why? Is there someone else on your mind? Or should I better say, in your heart? Do you have a secret boyfriend back on Jakku?” She gets back and sits down by Rey. Her eyes sparkling. “Tell me all about it.” 

”It’s not like that.” Rey’s eyes darts left and right and then lowers.

”So there’s someone. Poor Poe never has a chance.” Leia smiles. “Tell me more about him. Is he also a pilot?” 

Is Ben a pilot? Leia has told her of the story of how he took his TIE Interceptor and led the attack on Raddus. Is he a better pilot than Dameron? Oh, how much Ben would hate the comparison. Rey shakes her head. 

“So is this not-a-pilot boy the one you want to change?”

Rey’s face is so hot now that it actually steams. “But it will never work, right? They always say that it never works. Did you try to change Han? Did it work?”

“Hmm, let me think.” Leia raises her head and looks at the ceiling. “The thought never came to me, at least not in the same way. For us, it is more like I just automatically expected him to change to meet my expectation.” She chuckles at her own words. “That does not sound right, does it?” She walks back to Rey’s side, and sits down on a crate opposite Rey. “I guess it is worse than blatantly declare you want to change someone. It gets Han confused. That man has no idea what you want unless you spell everything out for him. I guess if I had asked him to change, if I had told him what I expected from him, he might complain, he might argue, but once that man gives you his words, he will stay true to them, even if it means his death.” After the last sentence, Leia Organa falls silent. She buries her head in her hands. She sits there as if in trance, completely lost in her private thoughts.

Is she still blaming herself for asking Han to bring Ben home? A request that Han took to his heart, and died on Starkiller Base by the hands of Kylo Ren. Rey can feel her pain. The wound in Rey’s heart is still as fresh as the moment Kylo Ren activated his light saber and thrusted it through Han. She wants to scream. She wants to pummel Ben’s stupid big head with her fists, and beats the pulp out of it. She wants to kill Kylo Ren. But killing Kylo Ren is not going to bring back Han, and what’s worse, she’ll lose Ben forever as well. She will never make true Han’s last wish, his dying wish, what he gave up his life for, to bring back Ben. 

Rey does not know what to say or what she can say. The wound must be at least as fresh and painful for Leia. Maybe the best thing to do is to give Leia the space to mourn. Rey quietly stands up, stuffs the last piece of cake into her mouth, and moves soundlessly into the hyper-drive compartment and back to her own way of mourning. She picks up another part from the bucket of cleaning oil, and works on putting it back. She let the force take charge, heal the broken hyper-drive as it heals her. She peeks over her shoulder. 

Leia has woken up from her trance, and looks at her, dumbfounded by disbelief and amazement. “You are using the force. You are using the force to rebuild the hyper-drive. No. You are using the force to heal the hyper-drive. I have never known that one can use the force in this way, use the force to heal a non-living thing.” 

She walks inside the hyper-drive compartment, stops at Rey’s side and sits gracefully down next to the young girl. “It’s so beautiful. How the Force works. It’s so tranquil. It’s so peaceful, so rejuvenating. This is amazing.”

Rey nods at the older woman, all smiling. Her busy hands never stop moving. This is her natural territory. This is how she uses force in the most natural way. Before she knows the force, she was using force in this way to scavenge parts from the wrecks at Jakku. Maybe it was a sort of healing. Ben once explained Jakku and the force scar left by so many lives lost at the battle that ended the old Empire. Maybe the force used her to bring peace and harmony to the force around those long forgotten wrecks, to help heal the force scar. Just like it is using her now to heal the emotional scar left by Han’s loss. This is how Force should work. This is how Force works. How she wishes the dumb head Ben Solo is here, with her, so he can feel the force, feel its flow, feel how fulfilling and therapeutic this can be.

“Ben? You mean Ben? How do you know him? Why are you thinking about him in such a familiar manner?” The general jumps up, hovering over Rey. Her beautiful perfectly shaped brows knot together. Her eyes full of disappointment. “Don’t tell me he is the secret boyfriend you left at Jakku.” She stares at Rey as if she is a stranger, a liar, and a traitor.

Rey feels anger too. This is between her and Ben. It is her deepest secret. It’s the secret of the Cosmic Force that connects them and bounds their souls. It’s no one else’s business. She feels betrayed and the deepest part of her heart and her soul exposed and violated. General Organa can’t do this to her. Not even as the mother of Ben. “Were you reading my mind? I didn’t say it aloud.” 

“We were sharing the force!” The old woman’ eyes were full of hurt, but there was more sorrow, remorse and tiredness in it. “Tell me the truth, Rey. Please tell me the whole truth.”


	4. So, it's Ben?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia Organa discovers the real identity of Rey’s secret “boyfriend”, and the hell breaks loose. Leia questions the nature of Rey’s relationship to Ben/Kylo Ren. This chapter is mostly a reflective rehash of the throne room scene from Rey’s perspective, and her reflections on her relationship with Ben/Kylo Ren.

“So, it’s Ben! It has been Ben all along, hasn’t it? Rey, I can’t believe this is happening.” Leia Organa angrily paces back and forth, her face full of disappointment. She tousles her perfectly made hair with her perfectly manicured fingers. 

Rey looks down at her own finger nails, unsalvageably broken after the tolls of years scavenging the wrecks on Jakku. From her finger nails, anyone can tell that she’s no princess. Only a scavenger girl with broken nails from nowhere. 

The general walks up and squats down before Rey. She takes Rey's hands in to her own soft and elegant ones. 

“It is not love.” She pats them tenderly. “It’s an illusion. Kylo Ren kidnapped you and tortured you.” It must be hard for her to say these words about her own son. Leia turns her head away, as if she can’t bear to look Rey, the victim of unspeakable crimes, perpetuated by her own son, in the eyes. 

When she recollects herself and faces Rey again, her eyes are full of pity and sorrow. “Rey, I can understand you. You are not the first girl who deals with it in this way. Sometimes the experience is too traumatic to live with. Our minds trick us into believing that we are willing participants in our violation just to make it a little easier to process.”

“Violation?” Rey is genuinely confused. “What violation? What are you talking about?” Rey raises her hands to cover her dropping jaws. She scoots away from the older woman. “No. No. No.” Rey stands up. She puts her hands up in front of her chest and crosses them at her wrists. "Stop. It is not like that. It is nothing like that."

“Rey, your mind is just playing a trick. It is a classical self-defense mechanism of victims of…” The older woman chokes on the word, before she finally summons enough courage to speak the word. A word so horrendous that is worse than a curse, a blasphemy. “Rape.”

“Ben didn’t!” Rey's face burns like fire. "It's nothing like that. I have never been…I am still a …” She shakes her head. “Ben would have never done anything like that to me.” She raises a trembling finger at Leia. “How can you say something like that about him? He is your son. He’s Ben.”

“Ben is gone.” The older steadies an arm on the metal encasing of the hyper drive compartment. “We have to accept it. No more denial, Rey.” She extends the other arm toward Rey with the palm up. “That man is Kylo Ren. He killed billions without a blink of his eyes. He killed his own father. He killed the entire leadership of the resistance. He almost killed me.”

Rey is in tears. "Kylo might have done any or all of those things. But he did not rape me." Her voice sincere and determined. "He has never treated me with anything less than respect.” 

That’s not all the truth. Rey bites on her own lips, and remembers how Kylo Ren rummaged through her mind against her will and how he claimed he could take anything he wanted. But he did not.

What happened between them on Starkiller Base is totally different from Snoke’s probing of her mind. That was torture. Worse than torture, that’s mind rape. 

Just the thought of that creepy old man in his sleeping robes makes her nauseous. Ben is nothing like that. Even Kylo Ren, the monster created by Snoke’s influence, manipulation and mind control of many, many years, is way better than that.

She wipes the tears off her face with the sleeve of her overalls, which probably only makes it even worse. But she does not care. She takes a step closer to the older woman, Ben’s mother, and squeezes the older woman's cold trembling fingers.

“Can’t you see it, Leia? Can’t you see it? Kylo did not do it. It means that Ben is still there. Not all is lost. We can still bring him back. It might take time. But we will bring him back.”

“Is it the reason that you went to Supremacy?” The woman takes in a deep breath and shakes her head. “To bring him back?"

"Chewie told you?"

"Chewie was concerned, deeply concerned. He did not think your little stunt trip to the supreme leader's flagship would have mounted to anything. He was right, wasn't he?" 

"But he gave me his words." 

The older woman waves Rey off. “Rey, Han went to the Starkiller Base. He couldn’t bring him back. You went to Supremacy, and you did not succeed in bringing him back either. Don't you see it, Rey. Ben is gone, forever lost to us.” Leia steels herself. Her face solemn. This is not Ben's mother or Han's mourning widow talking.

Rey feels the distance building between her and the general. The motherly caring older woman who gossiped with her about man and marriage is gone. Standing before her is the cold pragmatic leader of the resistance, General Leia Organa.

Rey can't let it end here. She has to convince the older woman that not all is lost with Kylo Ren. She needs the help of the mother if she wants to bring the son back. She has to make Leia see that there's still light in her son, in Kylo Ren. 

“Snoke was torturing me.” Rey digs through her mind to find the least emotional words, to ease her through the regurgitation of the worst experience of her life. “Snoke was mind raping me." The words hurts so much. "And he made Ben watch.” And these words hurt even more. Rey is quietly sobbing after uttering them.

“I felt his pains and anger through the Force. How his soul howled in anguish. He tried to hide it from Snoke, but Snoke knew it.”

“Snoke and his creepy darkness had been in his mind for so many years.” Leia sighs. “I knew he was there even when Ben was still in my womb. I doubt Kylo Ren could hide anything from him.”

Something in Leia’s words tugs a nerve and sound wrong in Rey’s ears. It bothers Rey. But Rey lets the fleeting feeling in her gut go and focuses on the task of convincing Leia. “Snoke ordered Ben to kill me. For a moment, I thought he was going to do it. But he did not." Rey wipes clean her nose. "He killed Snoke. Don’t see it, Leia? Ben killed Snoke for me. He is still there in Kylo Ren.” 

Leia’s face becomes more difficult to read, as if she is overwhelmed, not only by the new information on the events that happened on Supremacy, but also by Rey’s stubborn insistence. She takes a few steps away from Rey to digest the information. 

Rey waits anxiously as Ben’s mother paces the short distance of the hallway outside the hyper-drive compartment. 

“This is not right.” Leia murmurs as she paces. “This does not make sense.” Then she stops and turns swiftly around. She walks back to where Rey stands. She lays her elegant hands on the Rey’s shoulders. “Rey, Ben did not kill Snoke for you.”

The confusion on Rey’s face makes Leia take a deep sigh, as if she does not want to crush the naive young woman’s rosy hopes, but as a responsible adult and as a mother figure she has to. Her hands grip Rey’s shoulder even more tightly. “It is a Sith thing. A Sith apprentice lives to kill his or her master. It’s their only way to become one.”

As if she was not only out to convince Rey, she was also working hard to convince herself. Leia takes a long pause and goes on speaking very slowly. “Rey, Kylo Ren used you. He grabbed the moment Snoke was distracted by you. He might have killed Snoke. But he did not do it to save you. Sith don’t kill for love. They kill for power.”

Leia reaches out and tucks the hair fallen over Rey’s face behind Rey’s ear. “You are so young, so full of hope and optimism, so naïve of the ways of the world. You are mistaking a Sith’s ruthless grab for power as an act of love and kindness.”

Leia’s words are harsh. They are like an earthquake that shakes the very rock her belief and convictions are rooted on. Did Kylo use her to distract Snoke so he could strike? No. That was not what she read from the Force when he walked her into Snoke’s throne room on Supremacy. Rey felt the tumultuous thoughts and emotional churning under the surface of his mind through. How overwhelming and invincible Snoke seemed to him. How afraid he was. He was afraid for her.

“That’s not true.” Rey has never felt surer of her words. “When he took me to Snoke, I could feel his thoughts through the Force. He was so scared. All he could think was how to convince Snoke to let me live.”

“Rey, Kylo Ren is forever lost to the dark side. Why would he care whether you live or not? He does not care. There is no compassion nor love left in him.”

“Deep down, he still loves you, Leia. He did not fire the proton torpedoes on the bridge of Raddus. His wingman did. He had you at his cross-hair. But he could not bring himself to press the button. You felt it in the force, didn’t you?”

“How could you know? I have never told anyone.”

“Why not?” Rey asks. “Why haven’t you told anyone?”

“He led the attack. He had me in his cross-hair. It’s the same. That man is a monster. He does not care about anyone. He loves no one.”

“He cares about me. He loves me.” Rey blurts it out. It is a desperate attempt to defend Kylo Ren, but it sounds so wrong. Rey’s face is literally burning with fire.

“You are delusional again, Rey. You don’t really have a relationship with Kylo Ren. Come on, Rey. The two of you are on the opposite sides of the war.” Leia shakes her head. “You don’t know him. He does not know you.”

The defiance and self-conviction in Rey’s stubborn face must have puzzled Leia. She raised an elegant eyebrow quizzically. Thirty years of experiences as a politician and a diplomat quickly veer her toward a completely different conclusion. 

She looks the younger woman in front of her up and down with deep suspicion, and says without any hesitation. “Is there something between you and Kylo Ren that you have never shared with us?”

Rey’s face burns red. The scavenger girl from Jakku has no idea how to hide her emotions, even the most obvious ones. She is so naïve, as plain as a paper, so easy to read.

“Not just a little.” Leia circles the younger woman slowly, looking her up and down, down and up, evaluating, scrutinizing, as if she is an object of curiosity, a potential breach in security. “A lot. There is a lot more between the two of you that you have kept from us, from the resistance.”

Rey lowers her eyes. She loves Leia. To Rey, the older woman is a miracle sent by the Force. It is every orphan’s fantasy. Leia is the mother she has already wanted. She wants to share with her all about her Force bound with Ben. She wants to tell her every detail, every tiny flame of hope that she has seen in Ben. But she can’t. How Ben would have hated it if she did share this sacred bond between them with anyone, especially, his mother. 

“What do you have to say for yourself?” Leia asks.

Rey bites her lips and says nothing.

Leia Organa’s eyes narrow to two long slits. In the same way Kylo’s eyes do when he is angry, Rey noticed. “Kylo Ren almost wiped the entire resistance out.” The general’s voice is calm and rational, but also cold, so cold the air between her and Rey starts to freeze. “Any bit of intel we can have on him is tremendously value. You have to give it to us”. When did you meet him? How did it happen? What did you share? You need to tell us every bit of it.”

Rey shakes her head. Whatever she knows about Kylo Ren through their force bond is created and shared by the Force. It belongs to the Force. And no one else has any right to it, not even the resistance.

“I have shared all I can with you.” Rey’s voice is as sincere as there can ever be.

“But not all you know.” Leia shakes her head in utter disappointment. “You are the Jedi. You are strong with Force. You are the greatest hero of the resistance. The resistance depends on you. Your friends depend on you.” 

Tears roll down Rey’s face. She has already betrayed Ben once when she left him undefended, with all his potential enemies, Snoke’s stooges, Hux, on Supremacy to help her friends and resistance. She can’t betray him for the second time. Rey shakes her head again. This time much more determined.

Leia squeezes her hands together as she studies Rey’s stubborn face very carefully. She takes her time. And when she is done, she takes a long breath. She looks at Rey, her eyes cold, soul freezing cold. “I am disappointed in you.” The older woman enunciates every word clearly and slowly. She waits until every bit of its connotation has sunk in. She watches Rey’s response eagerly and carefully.

But Rey says nothing to explain, or even to defend herself. The younger woman just stands there, sobbing quietly.

“You are such a disgrace.” The older woman takes a deep, deep sigh. She wraps her cape carefully around her shoulders. “You are a disgrace to the Light Side. You are a disgrace to the Jedi. You are a disgrace to all of Luke’s high hopes for you.” The general takes one last look of despise at Rey. She shakes her head as she turns around and walks down the corridors, and out of Millennium Falcon, her back shrouded in shame and defeat.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Force probing someone's mind is mind rape, can there also be consensual mind sex though the Force? I'll explore it a little in this chapter, and maybe more in later chapters.

Rey has no idea how long she has been sobbing into her hands when she feels the familiar tug in the back of her head.

Not now. Rey is so physically exhausted and emotionally drained that she has no mental energy left to confront Kylo Ren. The deep cuts Leia’s words left on her heart are bleeding non-stop. But it is not what hurts her most. The hopelessness and the overwhelming sense of defeat that had shrouded the older woman when she sauntered out of Millennium Falcon has left Rey’s soul screaming in anguish.

Rey does not raise her head from her knees as she feels Kylo Ren’s existence approaching closer in the Force. She does not have the physical or emotional strength to break out of the comfortable and seething fetal position she has curled up in.

“What happened?” His large hands gloved in leather press gently on her shoulders as his words echo in the narrow space around the hyper-drive compartment.  
It is hard to ignore Kylo Ren’s large and heavy physical presence in life. It is harder to neglect his over-looming presence in the Force. But he is completely irresistible as he plomps down next to her on the ground, as he envelops her with his comforting existence.

“Nothing.” Rey shakes her head. Her quiet sobs break into heart wrenching wails.

Kylo wraps his arm around her trembling shoulders, leans into her, and holds her tightly in his arms. The smoothness of the fabric of his outfit is softly comforting. His fresh and clean smell is at least equally soothing.

“Why are you so distraught?” He whispers the words into her ear. His face is so close. His lips are right next to her ear. His lips are brushing the skin between her ear and her cheek. Gentle soft tendrils of his consciousness casually caressing her mind.

Kylo Ren and his bad habit of mind probing. The guy is incorrigible. She barely had the strength to fight back his mind probe on Starkiller Base. She has no energy to put up a force shield around her thoughts now to keep him out. She does not even want to do. His presence in her mind is so comforting, so soothing. The way the tendrils of their minds caressing, dancing, and twisting around each other is something completely different. If mind probe is rape, this is…Rey gasps. This is consensual sex.

Kylo almost chuckles. 

The incorrigible guy is reading her thoughts. Rey should be angry but she does not know whether she wants to. 

Kylo gives a weird grunt-like sound deep in his throat. He pulls Rey even closer. His arms hold her even tighter. And his caressing of her mind becomes something more, something intensive, demanding and aggressive. The light brushing of his lips against her ear and her cheek becomes licking and sucking.

Rey turns her face into Kylo, and her lips find his.


End file.
